Ministry of Finance
Nearly 72% of financial transactions of PSBs done through digital channels
Share of financial transactions undertaken through home and mobile channels increased from 29% in FY2018-19 to 76% in FY2020-21
The Government has taken a number of steps to facilitate digital banking, doorstep banking services and digital lending platforms. This was stated by Minister of State for Finance Dr Bhagwat Kisanrao Karad in a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha today.
Giving more details, the Minister stated that these services include, inter-alia, the following:
- Initiation of digital lending has been made contactless through PSBloansin59minutes.com, using triangulation of credit bureau, income-tax and goods and services tax  data, to provide online in principle approval for MSME loans.
- Online bill discounting for MSMEs has been enabled on a competitive basis through Public Sector Banks  onboarding onto the Trade Receivables Discounting System  platform and the proportion of online discounted bills has grown rapidly.
- Government’s ‘Jeevan Pramaan’ initiative for pensioners has enabled senior citizen pensioners the facility to update their annual life certificate online.
- Under the Government-initiated PSB Reforms Agenda,—
- Enhanced access to Mobile and Internet banking has been enabled through an increase in the average number of services offered , customer-friendly features  and regional language customer-interface ;
- End-to-end automated digital lending has been introduced in larger PSBs for unsecured personal loans , loans to micro-enterprises  and renewals of loans to micro, small and medium enterprises ;
- Digital retail loan request initiation through digital channels has been enabled in all the seven large PSBs, with retail disbursements from loan requests so initiated in the financial year  2020-21 amounting to Rs. 40,819 crore;
- Customer-need-driven, analytics-based credit offers have been given an impetus, resulting in Rs. 49,777 crore of fresh retail loan disbursements by the seven larger PSBs in the financial year  2020-21.
As a result, nearly 72% of financial transactions of PSBs are now done through digital channels, with doubling of customers active on digital channels from 3.4 crore in FY2019-20 to 7.6 crore in FY2020-21, and the share of financial transactions undertaken through home and mobile channels has increased from 29% in FY2018-19 to 76% in FY2020-21.
- PSB Alliance, an initiative of all PSBs and Indian Banks’ Association, has launched doorstep banking services for all customers, including senior citizens, through call centre , web portal  mobile app . At present 13 services are being offered in 100 cities across the country, which include cash withdrawal or deposit, pick-up of cheque or demand draft or pay order etc., pick-up of cheque-book requisition slip, pick-up of income-tax forms no. 15G/15H, pick-up of income-tax/GST challan, and delivery of tax deduction at source  and Form-16 certificates for income-tax purposes.
The Minister further stated that there is no proposal under consideration of the Government for setting up of a Digital Banking Infrastructure Corporation . As per inputs from banks, some PSBs have held discussions to set up a corporation to create a common digital infrastructure platform as a joint initiative of the banks, with a view to enable enhanced access to consumers and businesses for credit offerings.